The debt we owe

He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon Him, and by His wounds we are healed (Isaiah 53:5).

At the close of the Second World War, Winston Churchill paid tribute to those who had served in the Royal Airforce; he said "Never have so many owed so much to so few." As we look up at Jesus nailed to the cross, blood dripping from hands and feet nailed against unyielding wood, we have to echo Churchill’s sentiment: "Never has all of humanity owed so much to one person."

What do you and I owe Jesus? We owe Him our very lives! God gave each of us life so that we could serve Him and each other in love. But all of us have failed to love as we should—failed to love God with every ounce of our being, failed to love the people in our lives as if they were just as important as we believe ourselves to be. Instead, we hoard our love and spend the bulk of it on ourselves. Need convincing? Think back to yesterday—how much time did you set aside for prayer to God? How many minutes were spent listening to your parents, your spouse, your children, your friends, or a stranger who was lonely? Compare that to how much time you spent thinking about your needs; compare that to how much time you spent talking about yourself, your joys, your problems. When you analyze who gets most of your love and attention, it turns out to be you.

When we treat ourselves as of first importance, we break God’s laws of love: Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind; Love your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 22:37, 39). When you break earthly laws, you owe a debt to society—being a lawbreaker results in punishment. It is no different with God. When we break His laws of love, we owe Him a debt, a debt that can only be settled by divine punishment in hell. But on Good Friday something remarkable happened; God’s own Son, a person who never disobeyed God’s laws of love in any way, stepped in front of us. As His heavenly Father was about to sentence us to the worst punishment imaginable, our Savior—our friend—accepted God’s punishment in our place. In the court of the 70 Elders where He was insulted and beaten, in the governor’s palace where He was whipped and crowned with thorns, along the via dolorosa as He struggled to carry the cross, and at the Place of the Skull where He was nailed onto that cross and abandoned by His Father to suffer alone, Jesus paid the debt of sin that we owed to God. On Good Friday, Jesus suffered every bit of hellish agony that we deserved, so that our debt could be paid in full and we can be freed from both guilt and fear of God’s displeasure. "Never has all of humanity owed so much to one person."